Sentiment
by shakespeareia
Summary: When you're raised amidst marble and crystal, held to the highest of standards, and every day is a constant struggle for Family approval - falling in love with your cousin might not be the best of paths to take. Nate/Tripp, Slash.


**A.N. This work is an attempt to put in writing the apparent emotional and romantic tension between Nate and Tripp. This is wildly AU, and slash - if that's a problem, I urge to go back and read something else. If not, please enjoy and don't forget to leave a review! **

They're just kids when it happens the first time, giving them several years and multiple functions, charity events, and cotillions to perfect the arrangement.

This time it's cousin Lillian's high school grad party, and the rest of the Family is out on the lawn, business suits and big ascot hats, clinking champagne flutes and exchanging small talk. A few shouts can be heard from the private football field as one group of cousins and nephews scores a goal, followed by a polite round of golf-claps from the silk-gloved wives, girlfriends, and mistresses. Likely there are some quiet inquiries over shrimp and salmon hors d'oeuvres – where are Grandfather's golden boys? Missing as usual. Excuses will be made, chuckled away before the next bite of caviar, while everyone pretends not to notice the black-jacketed private security swarming the house, intent on hunting them down.

Which is why they need to be quick.

The Oak Room is the perfect spot in the country estate – one of the less ostentatious guest rooms, paneled all over in dark, stained wood, a giant, leather-padded sleigh bed in the corner with a plush mattress and thin, Egyptian cotton sheets – or ivory flannel, depending on the season – and best of all, it's tucked into the third floor of the east guest wing, where no-one has the energy or inclination to go.

It usually takes security about an hour and a half to give up, like they always do, leaving the two of them plenty of time to tangle together between the sheets, polos, slacks, Calvin Klein boxers, and tailored sneakers discarded all over the leather-padded furniture.

They're not very particular. Sometimes it's Nathaniel on his back, sometimes it's Tripp. Either way, the arrangement is simple – one gives pleasure, the other receives.

Today Nate has his head propped up by a haphazard pile of feather pillows, as his cousin nuzzles down his throat, bites and sucks at his chest, one hand riding his too-thin hipbone while the other moves lazily between his legs – there's no rush, and even if there were, it would be impossible in the early summer heat.

It's difficult to say when this started. They'd always been close, since before they could walk... perhaps building blocks and stuffed animals gave way to play wrestling, which led to long, _long_ study sessions in high school... by which time this all seemed perfectly natural.

The familiar, building tension in his stomach drives out any deep thoughts Nate might have at the moment, and Tripp nestles close as his eyelids flutter and a choked off moan leaves his throat. There's never any actual penetration – both of them are a little too chicken for that – but somehow it's just as good to lie there in the afterglow, listening to Tripp whimper into the pillows as he tosses himself off. A hand searches through the twisted sheets, finds Nate's fingers and curls around them tightly, and surprisingly Nate allows it, even rubs his thumb across a knuckle in a fashion that could almost be called tender. Tripp has always been the more sentimental of the two of them – allowances can be made.

Sometimes they migrate to the adjoining bathroom, where the neglected other might get his turn on the receiving end, pressed up against the engraved-glass shower door as heated water mists over their backs, groans echoing confusingly off the swedish tile – but not today. It's warm enough outside that no-one will ask questions about the sweat - a constant danger at Christmas and the Family reunions in late winter.

Nate gets his shoelaces tangled despite all efforts, and Tripp shoots him a withering smile as he buckles on his watch. His insides melt like butter in a microwave, and for a moment Nate can't help but contemplate how much more erotic a person can look – in any situation – once you've seen them nude, and at the edge of control.

"Come on," he murmurs, twining their fingers together with a relaxed grin. "If we're lucky, there'll be some beer left."

* * *

Their luck holds for another year, until Tripp's eighteenth birthday. The Family's gathered for cake and champagne in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, and there's much bewilderment as to the disappearance of the birthday boy. Ultimately, it's a hotel maid who comes across them by accident in a broom closet three doors down the service corridor, during an innocent search for glass cleaner.

News of how the latest inductee to the Vanderbilt patriarchy was discovered braced against a cinderblock wall with all his buttons and zippers undone and his decidedly male first cousin tongue-teasing his nipples won't look particularly good on election coverage next month.

* * *

The Vanderbilts are a fortunate clan – Grandfather spends the rest of the night reestablishing his connections and rebuying extensive shares in El Ad Properties, ending in Yitzhak Tshuva supplying the maid in question with more than the necessary amount to buy her silence. The rest of the Family knows nothing, and Grandfather makes it more than clear it will remain that way as long as he draws breath. The rumor mill spins of course – with one of the favorite grandsons in a potential fall from favor, every nephew and second cousin latches on to the slightest scrap of mud to sling – but the Vanderbilts have a conservative standing to uphold, and damage control measures are in place. Tripp is shipped off to Yale the next morning, a quarter of the credits for a law major already half-promised – as well as a discreet, private penthouse with 24-hour surveillance. If there's anything Nate has learned from his childhood at the feet of the Family patriarch, it's that money brings power – and the ability to play God.

They write – constantly. There's a kind of drunken giddiness Nate can't particularly explain when his cousin's name appears above his inbox – and he's not exactly sure he wants to, anyway. Even after his father is brought down, leaving he and his mother to fend for themselves in cutthroat Manhattan society, Tripp always seems to be present at the other side of the screen, with an eye to read and a hand to type.

_You're no pariah, _he writes one night.

_Not to me. You never were or will be._

Nate swallows down the dryness in his throat, eyes widening a little – because this is dangerously close to emotion, intimacy, and all the other suggestive phrases their Grandfather used in his throne room- like office that night. Everything they've wordlessly sworn off.

_I miss you._

The next morning Nate wakes up to find his inbox purged, his account information changed, and a message from his Internet provider threatening to rescind his connection.

He shouldn't be surprised – the Family has fingers in every pie across the world. They've spent generations establishing themselves as an unnamed global superpower. Perhaps that's why Grandfather refers to himself in the royal "We" during dinner and party speeches.

* * *

All connections cut off, he tries to move on. He jumps from woman to girl, to a different woman, chooses his friends carelessly, takes mattress suggestions from Chuck Bass, the unofficial Don Juan of the Upper East Side. He cons himself over and over into imagining spoiled, childish heiress, Blair Waldorf, loves him. He makes brave attempts to prove to an uncaring, unknowing world that he was wrong, that he was experimenting, that there is nothing to connect his teenage exploits with the man he's become. For a time he thinks he's succeeded – Vanessa provides a comforting shelter from everything he was before the past several years, keeps him grounded in a bohemian brownstone leaps and eons away from the country clubs he was raised in.

Then comes that morning. It was meant to be a simple walk down to the Harris Teeter for Lucky Charms and Cheetos – instead he's confronted by a black Rolls and a familiar, soft-haired figure in a black lamb wool coat, with words on his lips that send Nate's insides plummeting under the Manhattan concrete and miles beyond.

* * *

Maureen Stewart is beautiful, red-headed, and fashionable, with all the elegance and poise of a young Jackie Kennedy. In short, the perfect D.C. politician's wife. Nate doesn't know why he's surprised, or why he's sickened by the sight of her displaying her two carat diamond engagement ring, her left hand resting just above the Vanderbilt crest on Tripp's jacket lapel as they pose, smiling brightly for the camera, their backs to the enormous marble fireplace.

If he's deeply and truly honest, Nate knows full well that this is hypocritical of him. At least it would be, if the entire situation didn't have their grandfather's fingerprints all over it.

In the end, he slaps on a grin that more likely resembles a grimace and shakes his hand, clapping him on the shoulder with all the other Vanderbilt bachelors. Tripp gifts him with a genuine smile and a squeeze to his arm, and before Nate realizes what's happened he's been named the Best Man in next April's Wedding Of The Year. He acts the part well – surprised laughter, another firm handshake like they're trying to prove something, and consents happily – while something burrowed deep in his chest curls up, dies, and begins to rot.

For a moment he thinks he can see the same thing reflected in Tripp's blue eyes – but if he was right, if it was there for even a flash of a second, it's gone now.


End file.
